Volunteer For Our Planet - make a difference

Tuesday, 17 November 2009 12:07

People around the world are volunteering hundreds of thousands of hours to tackle climate change and send a message to world leaders that everyone is part of the solution. Are you one of them? Then don’t forget to make every hour count.

The new website www.VolunteerForOurPlanet.org invites you to register the time you have spent as an environmental volunteers since World Environment Day, 5 June, and the time you will spend until International Volunteer Day, 5 December.

Volunteer for our Planet is the contribution of the United Nations Volunteers programme (UNV) to the UN campaign to Seal the Deal at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

Since the website started in early November, nearly 400,000 hours of volunteering have been registered. The main idea is to highlight that the world must collectively do something for our planet, and not just leave it up to world leaders in Copenhagen:

“We don’t want to go to Copenhagen with just empty words. We want to go with actions – your actions”, says Flavia Panseri, UNV’s Executive Coordinator.

Be Inspired
On the campaign’s YouTube Channel, you can see movies and register your own. The UNV programme is also very committed to supporting environmental action, having people tell their stories on what they have done to change the environment.

On the website you can, for instance, read about Maria Belmonte Saldaña, from Spain, who shares her life-changing experience as a UNV volunteer in India, which included a 24-hour marathon clean-up action of the river Yamuna. And about how refugees in Tanzania worked to minimize their environmental impact in the refugee camps.

On the website you can also read about Hari in India who has volunteered1400 hours on environmental education, Phidelia in Kenya who is volunteering 100 hours to work on water and sanitation, Hassan in Sudan is volunteering 50 hours on water and sanitation, Michael in Kenya is volunteering 5 hours, Muhindo in Democratic Republic of the Congo is volunteering 100 hours on environmental education …

… And now – your turn!